Pokémon Zeta
by snappydog
Summary: A reviewer and an LP-er test the final game in the Pokémon series, and find that it's not entirely what they expected.
1. First Look

DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything to do with Pokémon at all. So… don't sue me.

_**Pokémon Zeta**_**  
>reviewed by Mike Coleman (s3cr3tlysl33p1ng) at anaesthesianet<strong>

**Everybody knows **_**Pokémon**_**. So everybody was kind of hyped to hear about a new generation of games, naturally. After all, these are the games that define generations of people. Not that every human being in the world doesn't already know this, but the announcement that this generation would only contain one game was pretty shocking. The announcement that it would be the last was worse.**

GAME FREAK

POKÉMON  
>ZETA VERSION<p>

PRESS START

_START_

NEW GAME  
>OPTIONS<p>

_NEW GAME_

OAK: Hello there! Glad to meet you!  
>Welcome to the reality of Pokémon!<br>My name is OAK. People refer to me as the DOCT!:%O^~R:$  
>People refer to me as the POKÉMON PROFESSOR!<br>Now tell me. Are you a boy? Or a girl?

BOY  
>GIRL<p>

_BOY_

OAK: I see! So you think you are a boy!  
>What's your name?<p>

NEW NAME  
>PLAYER<br>PLAYER  
>PLAYER<p>

_NEW NAME_

_ASH__

OAK: Are you sure that's your real name?

NO  
>NO<p>

_NO_

NEW NAME  
>PLAYER<br>PLAYER  
>PLAYER<p>

_NEW NAME_

OAK: You already told me that isn't who you are!

_ NEW NAME_

OAK: You already told me that isn't who you are!

_ PLAYER_

OAK: I see! So you are the PLAYER I've been waiting for!  
>This is my grandson. His name is… erm…<br>What's my grandson's name again?

NEW NAME  
>RIVAL<br>RIVAL  
>RIVAL<p>

_NEW NAME_

_GARY__

OAK: Are you sure that's who my grandson really is?

NO  
>NO<p>

_NO_

NEW NAME  
>RIVAL<br>RIVAL  
>RIVAL<p>

_ RIVAL_

OAK: I see! So my grandson is the RIVAL you've been looking for!  
>PLAYER! Your very own story is about to unfold!<br>Go forth, and enjoy the world of Pokémon!

**Review (cont.)**

**I've been playing an early leaked release of **_**Zeta**_**, and… it's interesting, to say the least. Some of the translation's a bit off, and there's the occasional glitch that ruins my immersion somewhat, but it feels like a Pokémon game. According to the reviewer's guide, **_**Zeta **_**takes place across all of the previous continents, making it much larger than any of the games before it: it's basically every generation rolled into one. I'll be keeping you updated with my thoughts as I play, and a friend of mine's agreed to do a Let's Play of the reviewer's release, so look out for that.  
>So far I've played the intro screen, and my feelings are good. More from me soon.<strong>

**-reviewed by s3cr3tlysl33p1ng**


	2. New Game

_**Pokémon Zeta: Review, Part Two**_**  
>by Mike Coleman (s3cr3tlysl33p1ng) at anaesthesianet<strong>

**I'm glad to report that Cipher of Sacred-Art has decided to do a Let's Play of **_**Zeta**_**! I'll be linking you to his experiences as they happen, but for now my thoughts on my first real playing of the game.**

Player woke up. He was in the middle of his room, standing straight upright, staring at the TV, as he was every morning. There was a bed in his room; he could get in, but stay standing up somehow. The books on his shelf didn't move, and his computer seemed to run on an operating system designed only to deal with storage and post. Not that he was complaining, given that his room was a full ten paces wide – and long strides at that. He had a games console, which seemed to him like product placement for some reason he couldn't quite pin down. A poster on his wall gave the confusing instruction of 'press the L or R button for HELP!', which seemed circular to him given that the poster itself made him feel like he probably needed help of some sort. He couldn't take it down though, so he just continued with his existence. He wasn't sure why, but it seemed that being in the room made his thoughts run in simple and largely unnecessarily descriptive sentences, so he headed downstairs.

It seemed to Player that he had a larger house than he should. Not 'should' in the moral, ethical or fatalistic sense, more that it seemed bigger on the inside than was right, if the outside was any indication. His mother – sat? Stood? Player wasn't sure; for some reason it was difficult to tell – at the table in the middle of the room of which the entire floor was comprised. Sometimes he wondered where she slept, but it seemed as if she simply occupied the same space day and night. Most people seemed like that for some reason.

MOM: …Right. All boys leave home someday. It said so on TV.  
>Oh, and OAK was looking for you.<p>

When did she have the time to watch TV? As far as Player could tell, there wasn't one in Mom's perpetually fixed line of sight – and, for that matter, how did she manage to speak in caps lock? Player left the house, feeling the transition between inside and out refresh him.  
>PALLET TOWN<br>The town Player had spent his entire life in was remarkably small, all things considered. He'd known its name since birth, as if it were permanently engraved into a corner of his mind. The distance to Oak's lab (he'd never got the hang of pronouncing names as if they were entirely capitalised, although he felt somehow like some past version of himself had been unable to say them without the caps, if he'd spoken at all) was eminently walkable, being not much further than that from one side of his bedroom to the other.  
>Two identical men stood, as always, in Oak's foyer, Rival waiting ahead. Player sometimes called him River on account of the fact that he looked like he'd styled his hair by dunking his head in a fast-moving river, but never to his face.<p>

RIVAL: Oh, it's just the PLAYER. Gramps isn't around right now.

Fair enough. Player tried striking up conversation again, but nobody seemed to say much more than the same two or three sentences over again when he talked to them. Instead, he inspected the walls. Two posters hung side by side, looking oddly like the one in his room. Some odd trick of the eye made them look identical from a distance: it was only from right up close that Player could read the instructions on them. Apparently, the START button would open some sort of menu, and the SAVE option should be used regularly. Well, that didn't make a lot of sense, but neither did a lot of things.

The world stopped.

BAG  
>PLAYER<br>SAVE  
>OPTION<br>EXIT

_SAVE_

Saved.

Player glanced around curiously, feeling oddly as if he'd been stuck in a moment. (He'd never heard the song, of course, but undoubtedly would have sung it if he had.) Still, he knew that he could come back to that exact moment again whenever he wanted.

**Review (cont.)  
>Well, they said <strong>_**Zeta **_**would be the previous generations rolled into one, and so far that's exactly what it looks like. It's basically just a clone of the opening to the first gen games so far, but that's okay. I'm kind of excited to see what they do with it, to be honest. There seem to be a few technical issues with this release – for one thing, the translation's just going to annoy me, I can tell. Characters seem to have an annoying habit of referring to the player (I named him Neo, 'cos I always do) as 'the', so in my case he's 'the Neo' to everybody. Speaking of his name, though, it took me ages even to give him one. Dialogue choices seem to be bugged out, giving only one real option, but I'm hoping that's just placeholder material. They'd better fix it for release anyway, or we'll be left with some pretty nonsensical and just plain unsatisfying dialogue. Cipher's Let's Play should be starting tomorrow, so look for the link.  
>-s3cr3tlysl33p1ng<strong> 


	3. Battle

**CIPHER: What's up, guys, Cipher of Sacred-Art here. Listen, I've been playing this new game. You'll have heard of it, 'cos every human on the planet who doesn't have their head stuffed in a soundproof, lightproof, pop culture-proof box has heard of it. Y'know what I'm talking about, of course you do. Pokémon Zeta. It's not available to the public yet, but my man over at anaesthesianet has sent me the sort of reviewer's release or something. And just for you, 'cos I love you all, I'm gonna do a Let's Play of it.**

Player returned to himself. The world restarted. At least, he thought it did; everything had a way of staying completely still even when time hadn't inexplicably stopped. Rival was still standing in front of him, his eyes blank and unfocused, staring straight ahead.  
>Player turned, managing a full 180-degree rotation without passing through any of the degrees in the middle somehow. That wasn't right. Or was it? It was how it had always been, he supposed.<br>He strode back, passing the two men who looked exactly alike once more. He didn't bother talking to them; they would only tell him the exact same thing.

PALLET TOWN  
>Well, where was Player to go now? There was nowhere else in Pallet Town but the house in which Oak's grandchildren lived, although it contained but a single floor, no apparent bedrooms… and besides, Player wasn't comfortable with the idea of just entering someone else's home, even if there would be absolutely no apparent ramifications.<br>How had he survived all this time?  
>Really?<br>How had he survived in Pallet Town – town of two houses, one large man who wandered around saying only a few words when spoken to, and a laboratory – all these years without dying of starvation or boredom? It had been years, hadn't it? He was ten years old… And yet, he felt almost as if he had only just begun to exist.

Something drew him towards the north end of the town. There was long grass there, and you weren't supposed to walk in long grass if you didn't have your own Pokémon. But where was he supposed to get a Pokémon when he wasn't allowed in the long grass? It seemed an awfully circular system, not to mention surprising that there were so many Trainers.  
>Apparently. He'd never met one.<p>

Wondering what was taking him this way, Player moved towards Route 1.

OAK: Hey! Wait! Don't go out!

Player froze. What? He couldn't move at all.  
>There was nothing he could do, not even look in another direction.<p>

OAK: It's dangerous out there in the long grass. You need your own POKéMON for your protection.

Player turned to face Oak – not of his own free will, the same force that had compelled him to stop now moving him – wondering how Oak had managed to not only speak in uppercase, but to actually vocalise a lowercase accented 'e'. Everybody seemed to be doing it, though, so he supposed he shouldn't be surprised.

OAK: I know! Here, come with me!

Player's feet moved against his will, following Oak back into his laboratory. Rival grumbled something about being tired of waiting, to which Oak looked confused – although his face did not change in the slightest.

OAK: Oh, that's right, I told you to come! Just wait!  
>Here, PLAYER, there are three POKéMON here!<br>You can have one. Go, choose!

RIVAL: Hey! Gramps! No fair! What about me?

Rival's ability to pronounce exclamation marks was, as ever, impressive.

OAK: Be patient, RIVAL. You can have one too!

So Player got the first choice? Interesting. Perhaps if he delayed his decision indefinitely, Rival would never get a Pokémon, instead condemned to stand motionless in the same spot for eternity.  
>That, however, seemed rather boring, not to mention pointless.<p>

So Player chose a Pokémon.

Bulbasaur was easy to raise, apparently.  
>Squirtle, worth raising.<br>Charmander, finally, took some patience to raise.

Player wondered what that meant. He rather liked the idea of a Pokémon that was easy to raise, but some new force took over. His feet took him to Charmander, and he selected it. No going back now.  
>But what was that? It wasn't the same force that had caused him to stop and follow Oak. That had felt… determined somehow, programmed. This was more directed, like some higher power taking control over his actions.<p>

Player took the Charmander. Something told him it was energetic.

Do you want to give a nickname to this CHARMANDER?

YES  
>NO<p>

_YES_

CHARMANDER's nickname?

_Fireball__

Are you sure?

NO  
>NO<p>

_NO_

Do you want to give a nickname to this STARTER?

NO  
>NO<p>

_NO_

RIVAL: I'll take this one, then!

Rival took the Squirtle, a choice which to Player seemed remarkably unfair. It was, it seemed apparent, the remaining Pokémon with the greatest advantage over his Charmander. So this was why Rival had been allocated second pick: to make life unfair for Player.

This world was screwing him over.

Player tried to leave the laboratory, but that broad force grabbed him again.

RIVAL: Wait, PLAYER! Let's check out our Pokémon!

What if I don't want to? Player would have asked if he could speak.

RIVAL would like to battle!

RIVAL sent out RIVSTART!

Go! STARTER!

Player was baffled. What was this? Some sort of music had overtaken the natural vibes of Pallet Town, becoming conflicting and warlike; his vision had blurred and he had found himself in a plan grey setting, somehow flatter than the normal world. He slid to his left, and vanished.

Panic!

Where was he?

Nothing!

Then his Charmander erupted from its ball, and Player was reborn as a block of text.

FIGHT BAG  
>POKéMON RUN<p>

What on earth..? Was this a Pokémon battle? His very existence transmuted into commands for the creature that now battled as a representation of himself?

This… this was torture. He couldn't even control the strange arrow stroking the options that he had become, as it selected FIGHT followed by SCRATCH.

STARTER used SCRATCH!

Rival's Squirtle used Tail Whip, a move which Player suspected had not been the greatest decision, for this battle at least.  
>Why was he frozen while Rival made his move? Why was this always the way, that each being in this world could not move until he had done so, and then he was immobile until their reaction?<p>

After a repeated series of Scratches, the Squirtle went down. It fell into the circle upon which it stood, vanishing.

Player reappeared in the laboratory, his mind racing. He would be panting if he could move. Rival said something about training his Pokémon to toughen it up; Player objected to the idea of subjecting the creature to further battles purely for his entertainment, but suspected somehow that he himself would soon be doing the same.

_SAVE_

Player returned to his frozen state.

**CIPHER: This is kinda weird, guys. I mean, it's basically just a reskin of Pokémon Red and Blue, from what I can tell. So far at least. It's kinda glitchy, or maybe just badly translated – they'd better sort that one out before release. I mean, I couldn't even choose a name, I had to be called Player. Gary was Rival, and my starter Pokémon was Starter… It's like they've just left the default descriptive settings as compulsory or something. Apparently the anesthaesianet guys managed to work around that by changing the files or something, but it's still weird.  
>So… yeah. Pretty much the same so far, except it feels weirdly self-aware. Y'know? I mean, I have no evidence for this, just a feeling, but it's like my little player character guy knows I'm here. Like he doesn't want me to be putting him through this.<br>Ah well. Next time… Gym number 1, I guess. If it's Brock, I'm calling it now – they've just sent me a reskin of Red.**


End file.
